Let's Get Social

What is your approach to social media? What value does it bring people?

I love social media. Since I was a kid I’ve always been tuned into what’s going on online and I wouldn’t have it any other way. The entertainment, community, and education I’ve gotten on platforms like YouTube, TikTok, Twitter, Reddit, and others is unparalleled. I’ve made long-time friends, found amazing career opportunities, learned so much about my culture and heritage, and so much more. I think there’s a lot to be critical about with social media, and I get some of the worries that people have for sure, especially the older people in my life. I think a lot of fellow Gen Z people think that just because they were raised on the internet means that they have inherently better media literacy for some reason and I think that couldn’t be further from reality. People my age joke about people falling for silly fake news on Facebook while parroting wild misinformation from TikTok. I have always tried to cultivate those skills in myself and I think it’s important everyone has a critical eye on what they’re seeing online.

Online, I try to be the most authentic version of myself I can. I think that’s the best way to be online. The ability to have an outlet where you feel free to do and say what you want and share how you truly feel is such a beautiful thing about the internet. Everyone deserves to feel open and free, but not everyone feels okay or safe doing so in real life. The internet provides the ability to find those safe spaces where you can be authentic.

What is the best part of your job as a social media and marketing specialist?

My favorite part about this job is that it’s creative. I have never dreamed of anything more than I have dreamed of getting to do creative work as my job. The fact that surfing TikTok and keeping up with current trends there–something I would have done either way–is a part or my job description is still bananas to me. Shooting and editing videos is so fun for me so it’s truly a dream to be doing it AND getting paid 😎 I am also a HUGE fan of my boss who definitely will not leave this part in the final version of this article. Mel, Director of Marketing for Peace Coffee, is such a fun person to work under. She embraces experimentation, which is another dream of mine to have in a job. If I have something new I want to try out, she’s right behind me giving the greenlight to give it a shot. I wouldn’t be where I am now and couldn’t be where I plan to be in the future without her taking a chance on me and giving me the space and opportunity to learn and grow in the marketing department for Peace.

What do you think about AI and its impacts on marketing and social media?

I picked a REALLY weird time to get a job in marketing. OpenAI’s ChatGPT started blowing up right as I was transitioning into my role, and I was dabbling with it and other AI tools a couple of months before that. I’ve always been greatly interested in and passionate about technology, and I’ve always been one to quickly adopt and integrate new technologies into my day to day, and things like ChatGPT are no exception. The way I’ve always seen it is that if I don’t quickly learn and utilize these technologies, I will fall behind. The concern about this for me, especially considering the flaws in the technology at the moment, is the overreliance of it by some. It’s one thing to drop several paragraphs of your stream-of-consciousness notes into ChatGPT and to prompt it to help make sense of it or pull out insights, but to use it to write whole articles or blog posts based on a one sentence prompt is bonkers. And it’s not only an abstract “humanness” that’s lost either. Things like transparency and accountability are at stake here too. What happens if you publish text written by a large language model and it contains bias because the training data was biased? Who is held accountable for that?

AI tools are being used to churn out social media and blog content, but it’s important to scrutinize the quality and authenticity of this content. Again, I’ve always been and still am a techno-optimist, but there are definitely some red flags and big question marks in this space at the moment. In my opinion, you can not have AI generated content at the center of your creative strategy and make anything of substance.

What was your first experience with social media?

Technically it was Youtube. I know not everyone considers it a social media platform in the same way Facebook or twitter or instagram are, but I count it! I was in like 3rd grade and my sister eagerly came home to show us a School House Rock video she saw at school on this cool new website. From there I kept revisiting this weird website to watch random videos and eventually found creators I liked. And after some time they’d link to their Twitter accounts which got me on twitter, A little later I found reddit, too and eventually made a facebook account at 13!

What is your favorite social media platform?

TikTok by far! It used to be Reddit, which I’ve been using since middle school, but since the pandemic, TikTok has overtaken all other platforms by a mile. The utility, the entertainment value, the community there, it’s all unparalleled online in my opinion.

Have you ever had anything go viral? What is it like?

A couple of times! It’s never the stuff you think will get big. When I was new to writing, I had my own satirical news website and I had a couple of the articles I’ve written get tons of eyes on it. Beyond that, just a couple of tweets a long time ago and a couple of TikToks on my personal page. I can’t lie, the nonstop stream of notifications on your phone is an incredible rush. It’s very hard to describe the feeling, but for me it’s exhilarating especially if you’re going viral for good reasons, which luckily for me has always been the case; I can only imagine how awful it would be for the viral response to a post being overwhelmingly negative 😅.

Fingers crossed I can do the same with the Peace Coffee accounts! 🤪